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2 hospital workers ill after contact with MERS

By Lena H. SunWashington Post

Posted:
05/13/2014 12:01:00 AM CDT

Updated:
05/13/2014 09:06:12 PM CDT

A Florida hospital employee who came into contact with the second confirmed case of the deadly respiratory virus known as MERS in the United States has been admitted to the hospital with flu-like symptoms and is being tested for the viral infection, hospital and state health department officials said Tuesday.

Another employee of Dr. P. Phillips Hospital in Orlando is also showing flu-like symptoms and is home. That person is among the two dozen hospital personnel and family members being monitored for potential exposure.

Hospital officials said they hope to receive test results in the next day or two.

Meanwhile, the 44-year-old health care worker from Saudi Arabia who has Middle East Respiratory Syndrome remains in isolation but is in good spirits, doctors said Tuesday during a news conference.

Hospital officials said that before he arrived at the hospital on May 8, the man accompanied a family member to another medical facility on May 5, the Orlando Regional Medical Center, and waited for several hours in the reception area while the family member underwent medical tests.

Health officials are contacting people who were in the reception area during that period of time, as well as others who were in the emergency department at the same time as the patient on May 8.

On Monday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced confirmation of the second MERS case days after a health care worker who was the first confirmed U.S. case of MERS was released from an Indiana hospital Friday.

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Health officials said he no longer had symptoms, tested negative for the virus and posed no threat to the community.

Because the virus does not appear to be transmitted by casual contact but instead requires close contact for transmission, health officials stressed that people who were in the waiting rooms of the two medical facilities at the same time as the patient have a low risk of contacting the disease.

Antonio Crespo, one of the hospital's infectious-disease specialists who is treating the patient, said the man was not coughing when he accompanied a family member on May 5, so there is less risk of transmission.

The man left Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on May 1 and flew to London, then to Boston, Atlanta and Orlando, where he is visiting family. U.S. health officials are attempting to contact more than 500 people in 20 states who may have been exposed to the patient, and international authorities are doing the same overseas.

The man worked in a hospital in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, that was treating MERS cases.

MERS, which was first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, can cause severe acute respiratory illness with fever, cough and shortness of breath. More than 30 percent of patients who have symptoms of MERS have died.

There is no vaccine or specific antiviral treatment for MERS, which comes from the same family of viruses as the one that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome. SARS killed almost 800 people around the world in 2003.